Don't lose sight of the fact that if there is syst...

2006-01-30T13:19:00.000-05:00

Don't lose sight of the fact that if there is systematic publication bias in scientific journals, physicians do not have equal access to differing points of view .
The Wall Street Journal made explicit a well-known left-leaning bias that affects most of academia and scholarly publications, medicine included.
When I submitted a satire on managed care to the NEJM ("Learning to Accentuate the Positive in Managed Care," Marcia Angell, the Editor, fast-tracked it to publication in six weeks. I wasn't surprised because it was consistent with the published editorial position of the Journal.
Yet when I did a later study on managed care with the support of Stanford Medical School, my academic colleagues refused to allow me to include my credential as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford's Hoover Insitution in the manuscript. They claimed that Hoover's reputation as a right-wing institution would mean "certain death" to our chances of acceptance in all the leading medical journals.

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Don't lose sight of the fact that if there is syst...